


By the Hook

by distant_rose



Series: Little Pirates [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Future Fic, Swan-Jones Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 12:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10639596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distant_rose/pseuds/distant_rose
Summary: Since the birth of his children, Killian Jones has kept his hook out of sight in order to keep from scaring his children. His fourteen-month daughter doesn’t agree with this policy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Three fic ideas in the brain mill and what is the first piece of fanfiction that I write in two years - a one-shot. Anyway, I would like to thank welpthisishappening for encouraging me to write this and dealing with my nuisance self for the past two days as I banged this out and constantly asked for her opinion. All mistakes are mine because I am trash. Depending on how this one goes, might make a “Little Pirates” drabble series starring Harrison, Westley (Wes) and Elizabeth (Beth) Jones. (In this fic, Harrison is 5, Wes is 3 and Beth is a little over a year old (14 months).) 
> 
> Questions and comments? You're welcome to chat with me on tumblr @ distant-rose.tumblr.com. Cheers!

“One of these days, we’re going to finally call it a quits and move to the other side of the country where no one can find us,” Emma says, exhaustion filling every word as they limp up the front steps of their home. She staggers slightly as her foot catches on the wood, swaying into Killian.

Killian groans at the unexpected contact but lifts an arm sluggishly around Emma’s shoulders to help his wife find balance. He’s feeling every single one of his years in this moment and nearly every part of him hurts. Bruises are starting to form on his shoulders and torso where the beastie of the week slammed into him. He feels blood trickling down his brow where the griffin’s talons grazed him. He is hoping against hope that he isn’t going to need stitches…again.

Emma gently pats him on the arm in silent thanks and leans slightly forward to open their front door. Both of them groan as they move to push off their shoes. Killian toes his boots into a fine line while Emma is more careless, one of her shoes flying into the air and hitting the wall in the dull thud. Killian is too tired to even care enough to complain. He just wants to lay in his bed with his wife and sleep for week.

Killian hisses when Emma unexpectedly lays a hand back on his bicep. Pain travels hotly up his arm. Emma gives him an apologetic look before stepping away, pivoting towards the kitchen.

“How does rum, an ice pack and Advil sound, sailor?” She asks, giving him a sympathetic look over her shoulder. Killian offers her a grateful smile that comes off as more as a grimace than anything else.

“Sounds like heaven, love,” he replies while limping his way towards the living area couch calling his name. A part of him knows that if he sits down, he’s going to have trouble getting up again but he no longer cares. He just wants to rest his bones and quell the screaming of his abused muscles.

However, he soon discovers his trek to the couch is more perilous than he thought as his foot makes contact with a toy truck left behind by one of his sons. The wretched piece of plastic blares to the life, sirens, lights and all as Killian loses his footing and falls ass first on the floor, pain shooting up his spine. Killian lets out a loud groan as he lays the floor, too exhausted to get up. Instead he kicks the offending toy in retaliation, watching it with only moderate interest as it whizzes across the floor and crashes into the wall, red lights still flashing and siren continuing to wail. Killian has never hated David more for gifting his eldest son with the obnoxious thing.

“Killian, you alright?”

Though Killian can’t see her from his vantage point on the floor, he can hear the concern in her tone and can almost perfectly visualize the worried furrow in her brow. He licks his lips for a moment before answering, measuring his words.

“Swan, remember how you were saying that we should leave and relocate across the country?” He asks, letting his entire body sink against the wood. Now that he’s laid out, he feels no inclination to get up. That would require work.

Emma is silent, obviously waiting for him to continue. Again, he visualizes her in his mind’s eye; this time she’s leaning across the door, watching him warily. Regardless of how many times he’s insisted that he’s a survivor, she never stops worrying about him. He can’t necessarily blame her considering their track record.

“Well,” he starts, drawing out the ‘l’. “Let’s leave the little pirates behind. The three of them are just as likely to kill us as anything else in this town.”

“Har, har,” Emma replies and he can hear her feet shuffling away from the doorway and back into the kitchen. “If you can still make terrible lines like that, then you’re fine. Walk it off, Captain.”

Killian merely chuckles in response, lifting his hand to massage the ache out of his left shoulder. He sighs, wincing slightly as the muscles spasm under his fingers. Tonight had been a rough one as he and Emma had fought to get wild griffins under control and away from the residential areas. When they had received reports about pets going missing, they never imagined that three horse-sized creatures would be the ones causing havoc, but that the same time they should have expected it. Storybrooke never did anything small, regardless of the issue. Killian knows it’s nigh impossible, but he just wants an entire week of mundane living. He wants to finish the mountain of paper on their desks back at the station, have ridiculous amounts of sleepy sex in a bed, eat grilled cheese at Granny’s, FaceTime with Henry, teach Harrison and Wes how to properly tie sailor’s knots and figure out how to make his baby girl go to bed on time.

“Dada?”

The phrase “speak of the Devil, she shall appear” casually flutters through Killian’s mind as he cranes up to look at the tiny toddler, ignoring his protesting ligaments. His only daughter is perched on the fourth stair, peering down at him with curious but almost impossibly large green eyes. She adds flourish to her query by popping her thumb in her mouth and sucking on it, her gaze never leaving his. Killian doesn’t respond immediately, ignoring her temporarily to glance at the old beat up clock sitting on the mantle. It’s nearly midnight and Henry should have put her to bed hours ago.

He looks back his daughter, this time taking in her full appearance. She’s dressed in her bed clothes, atrociously pink items gifted by Snow complete with a bright bow holding back her wild mane of chocolate curls. He can tell just by looking at her that she hasn’t slept a wink since she was supposed to be put down at eight. His daughter loves to roll in her sleep, which often leads to the tidy bows being tarnished and torn from their adorning place upon her crown. The ribbon is far too neat to have been mussed in sleep.

“Miss Elizabeth Alice Jones, you’re supposed to be in bed,” Killian admonishes her softly, careful to keep his tone light but firm. His daughter is at that age where she can throw a tantrum at the drop of a hat and the only thing worse than abused body and a mischievous fourteen-month old toddler is an abused body, an angry toddler plus cranky and awake five and three year olds. Not that his daughter has ever been a particularly even-tempered child. No, his little girl is a pint-sized tempest; colicky from the start. Neither of his boys, both affable and docile as babes, had prepared them for Hurricane Elizabeth.

The child in question doesn’t throw a tantrum upon being addressed however. She responds to the light reprimand with toddler giggles and a wide smile, showing off the small row of baby teeth that had been causing them hell for the past five months.

“Dada,” she repeats again, this time crawling down the stairs and starting to toddle towards him.

Killian tenses, readying his sore body to leap into action if she stumbles and falls, but for the most part watches her almost expertly maneuver the stairwell. He comes to the firm conclusion that Emma and he are going to need to baby-proof the house more than they already have. He has no illusions that Henry made a valiant effort to put her to bed in her crib and she had waited for the perfect moment to climb out of it, a feat both Harrison and Wes hadn’t accomplished until eighteen-months of age. (Emma will never stop taunting him that girls develop faster than boys.) The damn kids keep figuring out how to bypass all the child locks and safety measures they’ve been painstakingly trying to upkeep to no avail. His little pirates are just too clever and stubborn to be contained; a fact that both fills him with pride and frustration. (And regardless of what David says, his kids are little pirates. Harrison hoards and hides his toys like a pro, Wes is enamored with anything shiny and has a pair of sticky hands that drive Emma nuts, and then there’s his little girl who captains them all. Killian might be the Captain of the Jolly Roger, but he’s fully aware that he’s been demoted to First Mate as Captain Black Beth Jones takes control of the household.)

“Dada,” she calls. His title, the one he now holds with the most pride in, is a litany on her little lips. A larger than life smile etches itself across his face as he watches her walk towards him on cute chubby toddler legs. He really should put her to bed, she’s supposed to have at least eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep at her age, but he’s memorized by this little creature who stole his entire heart without his permission before she even drew her first breath. A tremendous feat he has no doubt she will top with countless others as she grows into the large personality he can already see arising her.

“Let’s have a cuddle, Little Beth,” he smiles at her. He outstretches his arms towards her; limbs trembling with effort. He’s beyond tired and really should get off the floor, but this is his little girl. He could be on the verge of death (again) and he would still ask to hold her.

It takes him a moment in his exhaustion to realize he’s still wearing his hook and he freezes almost immediately upon the realization.  Killian doesn’t wear his hook around his children, normally donning on a prosthetic to keep from frightening them. He made the mistake of wearing the hook around Harrison when he was a babe and the mere memory of his son’s terrified wailing is still enough to freeze the blood in his veins. He still has nightmares of his children running away from him, horrified of the hook attached to their father’s left arm.

Killian keeps the smile on his face, not wanting to alert his daughter to his internal panic, but lowers his left arm and hides the hook from view by sliding it behind his body. The hook and harness feel far from comfortable against his back but he can deal with the pain as long as Beth isn’t afraid of him. It’s a fairly small price to pay.

Beth, fortunately for Killian, seems to have not noticed his hook and clambers onto her father with the delicate and thoughtful discretion of any toddler. Though he’s five years into being used as a human jungle gym, Killian cannot but flinch as she jostles his injured ribs and plants her hands hard on his bruised collarbones. It’s rather painful, but nothing compared to the numerous times his boys have crushed his balls while carelessly climbing onto his lap. (With all the times that has happened, he’s vaguely surprised they managed to even conceived Beth.) Killian chuckles at the thought and curls an arm around his daughter’s tiny form, pulling her forward a bit so he can bestow a kiss on her brow.

“Dada,” she repeats, tugging on his clothes in an almost impatient manner.

“Aye, hello to you too,” Killian replies, giving her another kiss on the nose. Beth scrunches her face up adorably, her little nose, that looks so much like Emma’s, wrinkles as if offended by his whiskered kiss.

“Dada!”

This time her tone is sharp, almost Emma-like whenever she’s getting annoyed with him. Her little fingers curl into the sleeve of his left arm and tug more insistently. It’s then that Killian’s weary brain figures out that she wants something.

“What do you want, Little Beth?” He asks, his fingers absent-mindedly tracing patterns into her back. She’s a tiny canvas for his digits, but drawing little circles is soothing for him; it reaffirms that this wonderful part of his life is real.

She tugs again on his sleeve and looks at him with a determined expression that almost startles him because it’s the fiercest his toddler has ever looked.

“Dada! Up!” She demands with all the surety that only a small child can deliver and Killian finally realizes that she wants his left arm. She’s seen the hook. Beth wants to see the hook.

“No, little love,” he says gently, shaking his head in emphasis. Harrison’s cries echo in his mind once more. He isn’t sure if he could survive hearing his little girl emitting the same petrified screams and knowing he is the cause of it.

He watches Beth process the implication behind his words in the shifting of her facial expressions. It’s obvious that she understands what he’s saying to her and isn’t happy about it. ‘No’ is one of her favorite words to say, but she’s never happy to hear it from anyone else. Her face scrunches again and this time it’s not adorable. Hurricane Elizabeth is about to make an appearance.

“Alright, alright,” Killian sighs heavily. His exhaustion returns in tenfold as he slowly moves his arm out from underneath him and placing it at his side. Though his body is grateful for the reemergence of his arm, his mind is in panic mode and he can feel the adrenaline starting to pump back into his system, his heartbeat echoing in his ears as he mentally chants “please don’t scream, please don’t scream.”

Beth’s oncoming tantrum dissipates at the sight of movement and she scrambles across his body to look his arm, more importantly the hook. The expression on her face transforms back into the curious gaze that he saw while she had been sitting on the landing of the stairs. Killian’s breath stills as he watches her tiny fingers reach forward to touch the cool steel.

Almost without his conscious knowledge, Killian’s arm lifts to bring the hook closer to her inquiring hand and he wishes more than anything that he had some feeling in his hook as her dainty little digits brush against the metal for the first time. Beth’s mouth breaks into a large grin and the squeal of a pleased child emits from her throat. She’s fearless in her exploration to the point where her hand forms a tiny fist around the curve of his hook. Beth gives a small but hardy tug for a child her size and Killian cannot help the disbelieving laugh that escapes his chest.

“Careful there, Little Beth, don’t go breaking Dada’s hook,” Killian chuckles almost wetly. There’s no words to describe the emotions welling up inside of him at the sight of his fearless girl playing with the most dangerous element of his person like it’s a new toy.

Beth isn’t happy when Killian decides to maneuver himself into a sitting position so he can cradle her in his lap. Part of him isn’t happy either, bumps and bruises throbbing. However, he feels he can better facilitate Beth’s interactions with his hook in a sitting position. Her fingers have nearly grazed the sharp tip more often than he’s comfortable with, and while he’s more than happy that she’s so comfortable with his hook, he fears that cutting herself on it will ruin the wonder of this moment.

“Make sure she doesn’t put that in her mouth,” Emma comments from the doorway, humor lacing each word. “You know how she likes to put everything in there and your hook literally was inside a griffin tonight. I’m pretty sure Whale will throw a fit if we end up back in the emergency room _again_.”

Killian looks up from Beth to look at his wife, ripped away from the unnamable moment he’s having with his daughter. Emma is leaning back across the doorway that leads to their kitchen, watching them with a small smile and fingers absently tracing the handle of a cutesy ceramic mug in her hands. He can tell by her posture that she’s been watching them for awhile, but he’s been too wrapped up with their daughter to notice.

“I think she likes playing with my hook as much as you do, Swan,” Killian teases his wife, placing another kiss on Beth’s crown while taking his eyes off Emma. His signature smirk forms against Beth’s dark curls.

“Knock it off, tiger, we have company,” Emma responds with a roll of her eyes, gesturing towards the child in his arms with her mug.

“It’s not like she understands what I’m saying.”

Emma ignores the comment in favor of padding forward to crouch next to him. She places her slender hand on top of his larger one on Beth’s back, her thumb caressing his.

“You like playing with Dada’s hook, baby?” Emma’s voice rises a few octaves as she addresses the toddler. The corners of her eyes are crinkling as a radiant smile graces her lips. It sometimes amazes him how she can go from the battle-hardened Savior to Emma Swan-Jones, doting mother of four.

“Hook, Mama, ‘ook!” Beth replies with a delightful squeal, waving his hook around like it’s flag. Killian’s face hurts from smiling so hard at her antics. He doesn’t think his heart can handle the amount of love he has at this moment for his daughter.

Emma isn’t watching their daughter however. She’s watching the expression on his face and she’s laughing. She leans forward to place a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth.

“We are so screwed,” she says as she pulls away, laughing still echoing in her voice.

“Why do you say that, love?”

“Because your face right now. You’re so gone for her and there’s no way you’re ever going to tell her no. She’s got you by the hook…literally,” she replies, before gracing their daughter a quick kiss as well. “You got Dada wrapped around your little finger, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Aye, she does,” Killian replies, not even bothered by it. After all, it’s the truth. There’s nothing that Killian Jones wouldn’t do for his daughter.


End file.
